Mission View teacher/librarian Dan Gemeinhart is also an author. His first book, The Honest Truth, was published a year ago, and his newest book, Some Kind of Courage, was released January 26, both to excellent reviews. Both books were published by Scholastic. I sat down with Dan and talked about his book, and his life as an author, a family man, and a teacher.

Q:  Tell me about your family.

DAN:  My wife is a high school English teacher in Cashmere High School, and I have three daughters who are ages nine, six and three.

Q:   You have a busy life and a big family. How do you find time for writing?

DAN:  This year it's gotten a lot easier because I cut back to teaching half time. I had been teaching full time for the past several years, and that was really hard. I'd write in the evenings. I'd write from nine to midnight or and try to get some time on the weekends, but it was really tough. What I learned when my first book came out last year is that writing takes time, but being an author is a whole other job. There are emails to answer and things to take care, of and travel. After the book came out last year I didn't write all spring, which was really frustrating. I had little writing cottage built in the backyard. I can go out there and I can write for hours a day, and that really helped.

Q. How did you become interested in writing?

DAN:  When I was a kid, we moved around a lot. First, because my dad was in the army, and then because we were following work, so we were always moving from town to town and school to school. I was always the new kid and that can be really tough. Books were always a refuge for me. Every school I went to had a library. I was a voracious reader. Writing came naturally from that. If you love something that much, at some point, you want to try your own hand at it. It really wasn't until ten years ago that I really started working at it and going to conferences, like Write on the River, and going to workshops, and really sitting down and finishing books. I haven't looked back since. It still took me a long time to get published, a long time to write a publishable book and to get an agent.

Q: Tell us about your new book.

Dan:  The book is called Some Kind of Courage. It’s set here in this area in 1890. It's about a twelve-year-old boy, Joseph Johnson, on the journey west. The rest of his family dies and he is an orphan. All that he has left of his old life and his old family is his horse, Sarah. He's had her since he was a baby and he loves her more than anything in the world. Chapter one starts with the mean old man that he's living with selling Sarah to a cruel horse trader passing through. His horse is gone, so Joseph sets off on a journey across the frontier to get his horse back. It's kind of a classic western with outlaws and grizzlies. It's kind of a rollicking adventure.

Q:  Who's the audience for the books?

DAN:  Upper elementary through middle school.

Q:  How has your life changed since The Honest Truth came out?

DAN:  In some ways there have been some really big changes. Going back to work half time, and getting the opportunity to travel around the country and talk to people has been really great. But in most ways, it's amazing how there's no change at all. Trying to become a writer, with years of setbacks and rejections, you fee like if you got published, if you get that phone call, then everything will change. The heavens will open up and the angels will sing. But really, almost nothing changes in your day-to day-life. I love writing and story telling, and I love getting to have the time to do it. But I was really, really happy before I got published, and I'm happy that not much has changed.

Q:  Tell us about where your book has been reviewed and recognized.

DAN:  I've been really lucky. The first book, The Honest Truth, was an Amazon editor's choice, and an iTunes book of the month. I got a positive New York Times Review, and it got good reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and School Library Journal, even some starred reviews. [Dan’s new book, Some Kind of Courage, which was released January 28, 2016, received starred reviews in Kirkus and Booklist).

Q:  What is does your life look like now with your new book just out?

DAN:  I think it was Jeff Walter who called weeks leading up to publication, the calm before the calm, because the book comes out and nothing happens. I'll be interviewed on some blogs, and I'll be tweeting about it. Scholastic is sending me to Arizona in March and Texas in April—to conferences and conventions—to promote it. I'll do a signing at A Book For All Seasons on February 14, Valentine’s Day. I'll do signings in bookstores in Seattle and Portland. There's no big hoopla.

Q: You traveled quite a bit for your first book. And didn’t you do some book signings in Scotland?

DAN: Because Honest Truth was my debut, Scholastic was promoting the book and getting me out there as a new author, so I had a lot of travel—New York, Chicago, Washington D.C., North Carolina, LA and San Francisco. Scotland was where my wife and I went on our first vacation without the kids. I contacted my UK publisher and said, I'm going to be in Scotland if you want to organize a signing, so they organized them at a couple of bookstores. It was really fun.

Q: What inspires your ideas for books?

DAN:  Sometimes the ideas come piece by piece. They start with one little piece and then kind of congeal and come together and new ideas attach to it and the story kind of grows from there. Sometimes it comes in one piece. The Honest Truth started with one scene in my head that was in the middle of the story. I nourished that scene and the story grew out in either direction and the character started getting flushed out. Some Kind of Courage really came almost in its entirety all at once. Not every little scene, but the whole concept. I have another book coming out in 2017, and it was the same way.

Q:   What's the best piece of writing related advice you've ever received?

DAN: To write as much as you can, and not worry about getting it perfect. It's easy to sit there and agonize over every word and every sentence. I used to be such a slow writer because I wanted to get it right. You should do pre-planning and have some idea, but I learned that the important thing is to get the story down and get the words down. Revising is two thirds of the job.

Q:  Any memorable comments that kids have made?

DAN: The Honest Truth is about a boy and a dog, and the dog, Beau, ends up in some very perilous life threatening situations. I get constant grief from kids. How could I do that to that dog? I get very few questions about Mark, who's the main character, and I get lots of questions about Beau.

Q: Anything else we haven’t talked about yet?

DAN: NCRL (North Central Regional Library) has been awesome. They picked my book as a regional read. They bought hundreds of copies and circulated them through the middle schools, and then they sent me to nine schools in the fall, and they're sending me to more this spring. It’s been really awesome, and an opportunity for me to interact with all these kids.

Also, I'm really, really happy and fortunate being a teacher. I really enjoy it and I value it. It's every bit as important—more important—than writing. I'm just as happy being a teacher as I am an author.